


Like Toy Soldiers

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Reunions, UNIT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22736860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: The gang get an invite to the Tower of London, only UNIT seem to have missed a very important memo...
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Comments: 10
Kudos: 169





	Like Toy Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> An expansion of [this drabble.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10845912/chapters/37531253#workskin)

When the invitation came, the Doctor had to admit that it was a relief. After all they’d been through on Earth; all the indignities they’d suffered while trying to go it alone, and all the aliens they’d battled, it was a welcome sight when the little red notification popped up on the screen on the TARDIS console, demanding her attention as it flashed and pulsed black and red with obnoxious ostentatiousness.

“Finally,” the Doctor muttered, grinning to herself as she circled the console and squinted at the flashing symbol. “It’s not like it’s been… oh, five years, is it?”

“Who you talking to?” Ryan asked from behind her, and she shook her head impatiently.

“An old friend. One who’s finally got their funding back, by the looks of things.”

“Are you talking about that… UNIQ lot?” Yaz asked, her brow furrowing as she approached the console and tried to peer over the Doctor’s shoulder. “The ones you called to try and help with that Dalek?”

“UNIT,” the Doctor corrected, opening the notification and finding only a set of coordinates: place, date, and time. “Yep. It would appear their funding’s been restored, although I’m not sure who by. I _did_ send them a currency cube a few weeks ago… I think I messed the exchange rate up though. I was aiming for a couple of hundred pounds but it might’ve been closer to twenty pence. I hope they’re not cross about that… they can’t be, surely, or they wouldn’t have messaged. They’d have picked me up. Again.”

“‘Picked you up’?” Graham asked, sketching air quotes around the words. “What does that mean?”

“It means they picked the TARDIS up. Quite literally. All very embarrassing. Especially when I fell out.”

“Do you make a habit of falling out of your ship?” Graham wondered, raising his eyebrows in her direction as he snickered at the thought, and her cheeks flushed. “Or is it just a recent thing?”

“Oh, that wasn’t that recent,” the Doctor narrowed her eyes as she tapped in the coordinates and disengaged the handbrake. “That was back when I had a bow-tie and a chin.”

“You’ve still _got_ a chin,” Ryan pointed out, and the Doctor rolled her eyes.

“Yes, but back then, I had _a chin_. It was really something to behold; could’ve taken people’s eyes out. I very nearly _did_ , actually, but that’s another story for another day. I had ears like rocket fins as well. The next face wasn’t much better, what with the angry eyebrows; at least this time nothing seems overly-large.”

“So, what does UNIT do?” Yaz asked, as the Doctor busied herself with piloting them through the Vortex. “What’s their mission statement?”

“They’re the Unified Intelligence Taskforce,” the Doctor explained, as she focused on keeping them aimed vaguely at the set of coordinates. “They deal with alien life on Earth. Keep it safe, research it, stop it invading. That sort of thing.”

“Kind of like you, then?” Ryan asked. “Only… with more guns. We don’t like guns.”

“No, we don’t,” the Doctor grimaced at him in agreement. “Yes, like me but with more guns.”

“But… you’re an alien,” Graham pointed out, shoving his hands in his pockets as he spoke. “Do they control _you_? Keep _you_ safe?”

“No one could control me,” the Doctor pointed out, and Yaz seemed perilously close to saying something, so she cut her off. “And not really. _I_ keep _them_ safe, mainly. And sometimes I work for them. I think I’ve still got a desk somewhere... I hope I do. I don’t see why I wouldn’t, unless they’ve got rid of it. They’d best not have done. I liked the idea of having a desk. Never sat at it, but it was the principle of it. I hope it’s got a comfy seat. I bet it hasn’t, but we can work on that. Quick trip to IKEA; we’ll get it sorted.”

“You… have a job?” Yaz said with incredulity, and the Doctor tried not to feel offended by the level of incredulity on her friends’ faces. “Like, an actual job?”

“I mean, it’s not an _actual_ job,” the Doctor noted. “I’m not there now, am I? It’s more sort of… advisory. Come on, I’d be rubbish at a proper job. Think about how bad my timesheets would look, for a start.”

The three of them snorted with laughter at that, and the Doctor smiled to herself as she piloted them down and parked them on the embankment beside the Tower of London. Sticking the handbrake on, she switched on the scanner and peered at the screen, wanting to check for anything unusual before stepping outside. While not entirely unanticipated, the invitation was rather random, and she felt a niggling sense of suspicion.

“Why are we here?” Ryan asked, jolting her from her reverie. “What’s the Tower got to do with anything?”

“It’s their offices,” she replied absentmindedly, waving a hand vaguely. “They’re based here.”

“They’re _never_ ,” Ryan said in awe, staring towards the doors with amazement. “We came here on a school trip; it’s all suits of armour and the Crown Jewels and ravens and stuff. No aliens, no offices, and definitely no people with big space guns.”

“I mean,” the Doctor looked over at him with an arched eyebrow. “You don’t think they just leave things laying around for people to find, do you? Imagine you as a teenager, running around with a space gun. That wouldn’t be a good idea, would it?”

“I dunno,” he shrugged, then admitted: “No, probably not.”

“Besides, they need a cover story… and the income. Not to mention the fact that the Tower is an important part of history, and depriving the public of their chance to see it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Right,” Yaz chipped in, folding her arms and affixing the Doctor with an incredulous look. “So you’re telling me that underneath all the ravens and Crown Jewels and that, there’s a secret alien base?”

“Anti-alien, yeah,” the Doctor muttered, switching off the screen after finding nothing out of the ordinary, with the exception of a couple of especially luridly coloured jackets and a selfie stick. “Well, not anti-alien. Pro-alien-control. Scientific. Impressive. Look, just come out and see.”

She gestured to the doors, then led the way outside and stepped into the lukewarm spring sun. Tourists were marvelling at the TARDIS’s sudden arrival, and she gave them a theatrical little bow, which the team mirrored with a hint more self-consciousness.

“So, what now?” Ryan asked, as the Doctor locked the TARDIS behind them. “How do we get in? Is there like… a secret passcode?”

“Don’t be daft,” the Doctor rolled her eyes. “There hasn’t been one of those for years. They had to keep changing them as well.”

“Why?”

“Because I kept guessing them.”

“I thought you said you worked here!” Graham protested. “You’re just confusing us now.”

“I did,” the Doctor grinned. “Just sometimes they didn’t want me interfering. In which case, it’s stupid making the password ‘TARDIS’, really, isn’t it?”

“Fair point,” Graham acquiesced with a smirk. “So, how _do_ we get in?”

“We go and ask those nice men stood at the gates,” the Doctor decided, eyeing up the two soldiers who were very pointedly _not_ looking in their direction, but were holding tightly to their – decidedly Earth-made – rifles. “And hope they’ll let me in.”

“What could possibly go wrong,” one of the team muttered under their breath as she strode off towards the gates, but they trooped along behind her nonetheless.

“Hello!” the Doctor said brightly, as they drew level to the soldiers. Up close, neither of them could have been much older than Ryan and Yaz; they looked somewhat nervous as their attention flicked to the team, and the Doctor felt a sudden surge of apprehension. Historically, she’d found that inexperience, youth, and large weapons led to inordinate amounts of showing off. “I received an invitation from UNIT.”

“What’s UNIT?” one of them drawled, his finger twitching on the safety catch of his rifle. “Never heard of it.”

“Oh, come off it; we both know it’s been reinstated.”

“Never heard of it,” he repeated, his tone more menacing this time. His partner stepped closer to them, drawing himself up to his full height as he did so.

“Who wants to know, anyway?” he asked, looking them all over contemptuously.

“I do,” the Doctor said coldly, taking a confident step forwards and finding her way barred by the first soldier, while the second gave Yaz an insistent but firm little shove, before turning his attention to Ryan and doing the same, seeming surprised when he tripped and fell to the cobbles with a thud. The soldier dithered in front of Graham, visibly uncertain about the prospect of shoving an older man.

“Oi!” Graham protested at once, as the Doctor reached into her pocket for the sonic. At once, both soldiers’ rifles snapped up, levelled squarely at her head, and behind her Graham froze in his efforts to help Ryan back to his feet.

“Don’t you ever touch my friends,” the Doctor said in a low, threatening voice, her fingers clenching around the sonic. “Not ever.”

“Ma’am…”

Yaz and Graham hauled Ryan to his feet, and he immediately puffed himself up, trying to look as menacing as possible as he stepped in front of Yaz and Graham in a vaguely chivalric manner that made the Doctor’s hearts swell. Under usual circumstances, she was sure that Yaz and Graham would be horrified by such alpha-male type behaviour, and there would be more than one accusation of sexism or ageism, but in this instance, they both looked grateful for his intervention.

“You don’t touch them,” she repeated, more slowly and dangerously this time. “Do you understand me?”

“Ma’am, let go of your weapon.”

“I’m not holding a weapon.”

“Your hand is in your pocket; you are clearly reaching for a concealed weapon. Do not make us intervene.”

“What, you mean intervene like shoving my friends? Hurting them? Or shooting me?” she whipped out the sonic, and watched as their fingers twitched on the triggers of their rifles. They were clearly itching to shoot her, and she wondered idly whether they would do so with so many witnesses present.

“Doctor-” Yaz called nervously, but the Doctor ignored her, staring the two soldiers down. They were still so young; still slightly wide-eyed and intoxicated by the power and status conferred on them by their weapons and their uniforms.

“Ma’am, this is your final warning!” the first one barked. “If you don’t drop the weapon, we will shoot.”

“You will not. You will get me Kate Stewart.”

The second soldier let out a yelp of bemusement. “Who do you think you are, coming here with your weapon and your gang and name-dropping?”

“I’m the Doctor. Who do you think you are, with your uniform and your gun and your attitude problem?”

“Nice try, love,” the soldier snorted in derision. “Piss off.”

“Oi!”

From behind him, jogging over the cobbles, came the suited figure of Kate Stewart, who looked suitably and sufficiently appalled by the ill manners of her own employees. “Stand down, both of you!” she barked, looking between the two soldiers with fury. “Weapons _down_. She is who she says she is. God, wasn’t the TARDIS enough of a giveaway?”

The soldiers lowered their weapons reluctantly, looking at Kate with confusion.

“Consider yourselves both demoted to desk duties for six months,” Kate snapped at them. “And report to my office at 1600 hours for a discussion about your futures with UNIT. Otherwise, you’re both dismissed. Get inside. Now.”

They both strode away, their heads bowed, and for the first time Kate turned her attention to the Doctor.

“I am _so_ sorry,” she said breathlessly, shaking her head in disbelief. “They’re new… haven’t had much chance to train them yet… they’re a little…”

“Trigger happy?” the Doctor suggested, lowering the sonic before tucking it back in her pocket. “Thuggish? They shoved my friends. Ryan could’ve really hurt himself.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said again, her expression mortified. “Truly, I am. Come in. Please. And rest assured, they’ll be spoken to.”

“I mean, don’t fire them,” Ryan said worriedly. “I don’t want no-one losing their jobs. I just think maybe they ought not to go around shoving people; what if we’d been tourists?”

“You must be Ryan Sinclair,” Kate said, looking him over with an unreadable expression. “They won’t lose their jobs, Ryan. They’ll just be shouted at for a good ten minutes or so. I’ll see to it personally.”

“Who might you be?” Graham asked, frowning Kate looked over at the Doctor with a smile.

“Kate Stewart. Chief Scientific Officer, Unified Intelligence Taskforce. Which, by the way, has been reinvigorated by the Doctor’s _extremely_ generous donation,” she turned her attention back to the Doctor. “Where did you get two billion from?”

“Two… billion?” the Doctor asked, feeling horror dawn on her. “Not… twenty pence?”

“No, two billion,” Kate narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You did _mean_ for it to be that much, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said brightly. “Yes, of course. I mean, there might’ve been an exchange rate mix-up, but…”

“Maybe you should come in,” Kate said with a snort of laughter. “I think you all need a cup of tea, and I have two soldiers who need a dressing down.”


End file.
